Earlier this week, I called up Jessica Beyer, who teaches high school in Baltimore County in Maryland.

What are your kids studying right now?

I teach English. So in our 11th grade, they're learning American literature.

And currently our unit is about American activism.

Because of the pandemic, Jessica teaches online. The kids are on Google Meet, and they file

their work into an online learning management system. Right before the break, we were talking

about the Declaration of Independence. We're going to read a speech from Barack Obama tomorrow. And then my 12th graders were on a unit about the evolution of gender roles.

Jessica says this year has been a lot for her students. They come from mostly low-income communities. Many have lost people to COVID. It's felt like one hurdle after another.

It's been a struggle to get a lot of kids to even engage with online learning.

Some kids just don't want to do it.

Some just didn't have the technology because the county wasn't able to get access to all the laptops that they needed.

And even up to a couple of weeks ago, we're still distributing laptops to kids who didn't have them.

Last Wednesday, it got even harder. Jessica was about to assign her seniors the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, to read over Thanksgiving break.

And then I got a text from our department chair saying, we're closed today. Don't access the email. Delete everything from your phone,

essentially, basically shut everything down.

Jessica's school and the entire Baltimore County system that serves 115,000 students,

had been the victim of a ransomware attack. That's when hackers break into a

digital system, encrypt files, and demand payment to unlock them. In Baltimore County, that meant

the learning system, schoology, was down. So was the school's main digital hub. No one could access

any student work, assignments, or grades.

And kids, teachers, and parents couldn't exchange messages. Someone, and it's still unclear who,

wanted money to unlock any of it.

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